


Nothing Special

by CaraLee



Series: The Guardians [2]
Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), The Sentinel
Genre: Avocados at Law, Avocados in Training, Cannonical Character Death, Gen, GenSen, I Haven't Finished Season 2 Yet, Pass it on, We Are Going To Make This a Tag People
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-18 17:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8169856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaraLee/pseuds/CaraLee
Summary: Matthew Michael Murdock is a sentinel. Franklin Percival Nelson is his guide. Not that either of them know any of that.They are just Matt and Foggy. Two best friends who take care of each other.And they manage pretty well. For the most part.





	1. In Which Foggy Is Master of Google-Fu and Winging It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morosophe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morosophe/gifts).



> So it took me absolute ages, but I finally am beginning to post this fill from the kink meme here. Further chapters will be upcoming, from various POVs and from various points in MCU history.  
> I'm pretty sure that once I have time to actually watch the second half of Season 2 there will be several new chapters, fair warning.  
> ***  
> The prompt for this fill was basically, "We need Daredevil/Sentinel Crossovers. Write some!" And it was something like the third or fourth DDxSen prompt that I passed and turned out to be the straw that broke the camels back.

Foggy freaks the first time he comes back to the dorm, running on the high of having finished his last mid-term, and finds Matt just standing in the middle of the room, head cocked slightly to the side the way it is when he is listening to something, completely unresponsive. He pokes and prods his roommate for a good five minutes, calls his name and even waves a hand in front of his face before he gets a response. He actually gives up and is in the process of dialing 911 when Matt makes a harsh, confused little sound, like a puppy sitting on a ferret, and sways on his feet.

"Foggy? What-"

"Dude!" Foggy interrupts, tossing his phone onto his bed. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest and, okay, yeah, maybe he's a little unsettled but can you blame a guy? "What the hell was that?"

Matt blinks at him (or a space over his left shoulder anyway) with his forehead furrowed, his eyes flicking around sporadically. It's a little hypnotic honestly, and Foggy abruptly realizes that this is the first time he has really seen Matt without his glasses on, other than the occasional glances caught in the mornings and at night. They've been roommates for a month and a half and he hadn't ever had a clear, unobstructed view of the guy's face before. Matt sways again and Foggy decides that making sure he doesn't collapse is probably more important than gazing soulfully into his eyes or whatever. He cautiously nudges Matt to sit on his own bed and pulls one of the desk chairs over to sit in front of him.

"Are you okay? 'Cause I'm still not sure if I should call an ambulance or not. You were seriously checked out there."

Matt flushes a bright red and ducks his head, doing that thing where he sort of curls up into himself like a hedgehog. "N-nothing. Nothing. It's...Nothing. I'm fine."

"Uh huh." Candace would be proud of the amount of sarcasm Foggy packs into that grunt. "I've seen fine and dude, that? Was not fine. It was like," he hesitates. "The lights were on but nobody was home."

The material of Matt's horrifyingly ugly sweater (It's _soft_ , Foggy.) rustles as he worries the hem between his fingers while staring sightlessly at the opposite wall. "How long was-How long was I out of it?" His jaw is clenched and most of his expression is blank but apparently being blind doesn’t stop the eyes from fulfilling that whole ‘window to the soul’ thing because now that the glasses aren’t in the way Foggy can see a heartbreaking mixture of frustration and what he thinks might be self-loathing. (He’s only known Matt for a few weeks but he finds that conclusion disturbingly easy to accept as possible.)

"Dunno." He shrugs automatically before remembering. "I just shrugged. You were just standing there when I got back?"

Matt's face turns towards the table where his alarm clock is sitting, just out of reach. "W-what time is it?"

"4:52. Why?"

He doesn't answer of course, jerk. Just shrugs. Foggy opens his mouth to demand more answers before grinding to a halt. As previously stated, he has only known Matt Murdock for a month and a half, (six weeks and three days) in that time he has seen him look nervous, amused, awkward, determined...any number of expressions visible despite the glasses. He has never seen Matt Murdock look _scared_. He makes an executive decision. "I'm going to move over and sit beside you. Okay?" And he does. He makes sure to leave some space between them, Matt is still a little wary of casual touching. (Once he gets comfortable though, he'll turn a one-eighty. Foggy knows. He's never wrong about this. Matt Murdock is a closet cuddler who is so deep in that closet that he doesn’t even know.)

They sit in silence for awhile before Matt finally speaks. "I really am-really am okay, you know. I always come out of it eventually."

Foggy doesn't say anything, but he is terrified at the thought of this being a regular occurrence.

 _Matt is tired, worn out by...whatever that was and reluctantly drops off to sleep soon after. Foggy powers on his laptop and consults the Google-gods. That is how he learns about "absence seizures". It isn’t like Foggy has a medical degree because, yeah,_ law _school, but it seems to fit._

 _Matt has a total of thirty-seven more during their time as roommates. That Foggy knows about. They last anywhere from no more than thirty-forty seconds, to one terrifying episode that lasted a full half-hour and Foggy had to bring him out of it with a steady stream of chatter and gentle pressure on his hand graduating to panicked name yelling and a bruising grip when he_ stopped breathing _.The episodes don't happen as often at the end of their time in school, but after they get their own apartments and leave Landman & Zack for their own practice there is more than one morning when Matt doesn't show up to work and doesn't answer his phone and Foggy rushes to his apartment, terrified that this will be the time he finds his best friend so far gone he can't bring him back._

***

If the absence seizures are bad, the migraines are worse, if only because Matt is actually _there_ in his head to be directly affected by them.

The first one of those comes right before Thanksgiving that first year, just when Foggy has started to, not get used to because he doesn’t think he’ll ever be _used_ to them, but freak out (a little) less about the seizures. Matt is one of the strongest people he knows, and seeing him reduced to a tightly-wound, quivering, moaning ball of pain is so far beyond unsettling it isn't funny.

There isn't much he can do other than keep the trashcan lined with fresh bags, emptying it every time Matt throws up, and keeping a low, barely-above-a-whisper hum of gentle nonsense words that Matt latches onto like a life-line. Foggy gets through every single one of Great-Gran Nelson’s stories about her childhood cat like that. (Do you know how many stories that lady had about Cuddles? Because It’s a lot. She died when Foggy was only thirteen but he heard them all so many times that he can remember every single one. Complete with inflections and fond exclamations.)

When Matt's feeling better, he actually gets some answers out of him. Sound hurts, taste and smell are overwhelming, touch hurts, everything hurts. Matt doesn't say anything, but Foggy can tell that somehow, just by being there, he helps. It _might_ have something to do with the death grip Matt has on his hand the entire time they talk. (He thinks he might have a hairline fracture in a couple of fingers.)

The next time he is woken in the middle of the night by Matt trying to suffer in silence he texts Jennifer and asks her to take notes for him, he won't be making it in to class today.

_The Migraines (and they totally deserve a capital "M") grow far less frequent after the first year. By the time Nelson & Murdock is a reality, it has been eleven months, two weeks and one day without one. (Foggy knows. He counts.)_

***

By the time their first spring break as roomies rolls around, Foggy can practically write a "Care and Keeping of Matt Murdock" guide book. Don't startle him. Wake him up by throwing a pillow from across the room. Remind him to eat at least once a day. Feed him bland and/or familiar foods, especially when he's tired. Make sure that mom knows how he's doing. (Anna Nelson has a favorite son and it sure isn't Foggy.)

And Matt returns the favor. Not as rambunctiously as Foggy does, but it doesn't take long before the random appearance of food and...well, mostly food, all his favorite things and several more "healthy" options, ceases to amaze him. Matt seems to have appointed himself as Foggy's ninja baby-sitter, which since Foggy has decided to be Matt's not-ninja caretaker is really only fair. (How a blind man is able to be so freakin' sneaky though, he'll never know.)

He draws the line at Matt fighting his battles for him.

It's really weird actually. Matt may occasionally show signs of being an (extremely) emotionally clueless mother-hen from Hell, but he knows that Foggy is perfectly capable of holding his own, especially against hundredth-rate creeps like Mac Murray who are still stuck back in the stone age of high school. That doesn't stop him from verbally ripping the loser a new one when he manages to insult Foggy's weight, hygiene, and capabilities all in one statement, right after knocking him into the corner of the student center hard enough to wind him. (And Foggy takes offense at that. It is impossible to room with Matt Murdock and _not_ have good hygiene. Not that Matt complains but it obviously bothers him when Foggy goes too long without showering or doing laundry or emptying his trashcan. And Foggy does not deny his ability to be a complete asshole when necessary but he isn't cruel.)

If Foggy hadn't been physically holding him back, he's pretty sure that Matt would have actually assaulted the guy which would not have gone well. On so many levels.

 _They have a huge fight about it when they get back to the dorm. They don't talk for three days until Foggy finds Matt in the bathroom with his fingers resting lightly on one of the rough hand-towels that his mom had sent them._ _It takes him fifteen minutes to pull Matt out of that one and they seem to mutually decide to not mention the past few days. He does occasionally notice Matt holding himself back on occasion instead of leaping to Foggy's defense._

_Foggy appreciates it._


	2. In Which Matt is a Weepy Panda Who Needs Love and Stick Needs a Kick Where The Sun Don't Shine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matty Murdock learns to cope. Sort of. Kind of. Not really. But he thinks he does.

When Matthew Michael Murdock was nine years old he saved a man and was blinded by the contents of the truck he had saved him from.

Waking up in the hospital that first time was one of the worst moments of his entire life and he’s had a lot of moments competing for that spot. So many that this first one eventually fell by the wayside but he still has nightmares about it sometimes. Not as often, but sometimes. It’s always worse in the nightmares; his dad doesn’t come, there is just the darkness and the loneliness and the noise, so much _noise_ with no steady heartbeat and no hands that are both lovingly rough and awkwardly gentle come to sooth and distract. Nothing to focus on and let the pain and the death and the grief fade away into the background.

When it happened for real Matt wasn’t alone, though he’d felt like he was at first. His dad had been there, tender in a way that few would have ever believed Battlin’ Jack Murdock capable of, all whiskey-and-sweat-scent and bruises and stubble under little Mattie’s trembling, frightened fingers. In the midst of the confusion and fear and terrifying new abilities, his father was the rock that kept Mattie grounded. He would wait up, not just to help patch his dad up when he came home, but because he _couldn’t_ sleep without him near, without his familiar heartbeat to drown out the screams and screeches and sirens of Hell’s Kitchen. In a world of darkness and noise and scent and sensation, Jack Murdock was Mattie’s safe place.

And then came the Creel fight when he was eleven. Matt vividly remembers sitting in their tiny little living room, fixated on the sounds from the television. The audio quality was horrible, but Mr. Ricky Jefferson was a good commentator and Mattie had been able to construct the fight in his mind as it happened. The jubilation when his dad delivered the knock-out…But he’d known. In the smallest breath of time before he’d been woken by the gunshot, he’d _known_. Something deep inside him, some connection that bound him to his dad, had snapped, brutally severed. His blood-soaked fingers had only told him what he didn’t need to be told.

He doesn’t remember being moved to St. Agnes. He was too lost in the sea of sounds and smells and deep, ripping guilt to be really aware of anything. He didn’t have an anchor anymore. He was alone. And it was his fault. All his fault.

Occasionally, the overwhelming waves would subside and he would dare to hope…But then they would come back, often worse than before and it hurt so much and he just wanted it to _stop_.

Stick taught him how to swim.

It was hard and painful, even more than the physical training (though the time when Stick broke his arm and his touch spiked had hurt so bad he’d almost passed out) but Stick had taught him how to sift through the floods and search out the _information_. He learned how to separate tastes and smells and sounds from each other and use them to build an understanding of the world around him far beyond what anyone else could even begin to imagine.

Stick’s rough voice, hard hands, smoke and old fabric. The nuns and their hushed, low voices, the other children-other _orphans_ and their deep-set odor of bitterness and abandonment.

He didn’t smell like that, not really. Not until Stick left. Then he made himself sick on his own stench.

***

Foggy is _weird_. He doesn’t freak out over Matt being defective (okay, that’s a lie, he freaks out but he stays anyway) he just starts…accommodating. He takes the trash out every day, more often if they’ve had a particularly smelly food in the room. (Matt should tell him that the trash doesn’t really bother him _that_ much unless it is a bad day. He really should.) He changes out the head-aching scented detergent that he uses (because it is the same brand as his mom uses and the smell reminds him of home) for an unscented cleaner.

And somehow, just by being there, he makes Matt feel _safe_. Like Foggy has some sort of magic that ties Matt’s senses down and tames them, makes them easier to manage. Matt falls asleep to the thud-thump of Foggy's heart like he used to with Dad's  

Matt should know better than to depend on someone this much. Foggy will leave, everyone does eventually. (Even Elektra and she _understood_ so much and nothing at all.)

But Matt is selfish and maybe, just maybe, Foggy will stay a little longer.


End file.
